Fiber cushion for packaging

Sustainable, easy to recycle, easy to process, and elegant

Page Image

Image Caption

Page Content

VTT Fibre cushion technology is a new approach for producing cartons: sustainable, easy to recycle, easy to process, and elegant.

Currently in cartons, the elements holding the products in place are typically non sustainable as being difficult to recycle, not suitable for short run production, or lack the properties needed in high class brand packaging.

Fibre Cushion technology offers new business opportunities for the whole packaging industry. Contact us to learn more!

Strong fibre process technology enables innovation

Strong competence on unit processes such as forming and drying are basic in developing new fibre-based products. One example is lightweight material for replacing EPS in the cushioning of different packaging needs. Physical properties (e.g. density) can be tailored based on the requirements of different products.

The VTT process concept consists of:

Preparing the fibre stock ready for moulding

Giving the product specific form to the component in the mould

Dewatering and drying the component

The main raw material is wood fibre (virgin or recycled) while ingredients like nan0-fibrillated cellulose can be used to adjust the properties, and colourants for visual appearance. Water, surfactant and air are added to create an extremely bulky light weight structure. In comparison to many other novel bio-packaging concepts, the strength is the raw material availability: all components are commercially available from several suppliers.

Upscaling with the industry

Manufacturing of fibre foam technology was mainly developed within a publically funded EffNet programme. Further development especially related to the drying of porous material was made in the ERDF TESTAA-project. Currently, the development of fibre cushioning materials is in the laboratory phase, and samples having dimensions 50*50*20 cm can be manufactured.

The next step is the up-scaling of the manufacturing process and fine-tuning the product properties for different end-use segments.

Cushioning material is mainly developed for the packaging sector, but similar manufacturing technology also allows production of porous fiber material for decorating, filtering, sound and heat insulating solutions.